iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Maike Morrison

@maikemorrison.bsky.social

709 followers 191 following 36 posts

Building mathematical tools to answer biological questions Ecology & evolution, sometimes microbiomes & cancer Omidyar Fellow @SFIscience.bsky.social Former PhD student with Noah Rosenberg, Stanford University MaikeMorrison.com

Posts Replies Media

Maike Morrison @maikemorrison.bsky.social · 12/11/2025

Northern lights over Santa Fe!

080

Maike Morrison @maikemorrison.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

Rank-choice voting AND a roadrunner sticker? NM has voting figured out.

"I voted! / !Yo voté!" sticker featuring a road runner, a yucca, and a Zia symbol in the background

1205

Maike Morrison @maikemorrison.bsky.social · 14/03/2025

7/ (Ex. 2) In longitudinal microbiome samples from healthy humans taking an antibiotic (collab with @ksxue.bsky.social), FAVA is much higher post-abx than pre-abx, and just half of the 22 subjects return to their baseline FAVA level (computed in 6-sample sliding window) during the 30 days post-abx!

Plot showing longitudinal microbiome composition for three individuals who took an antibiotic, along with corresponding plots showing FAVA computed in sliding windows. For all subjects, FAVA increases during the antibiotic window. In one subject (XDA) we see that FAVA can return to stability (low FAVA) without returning to the pre-abx composition.

150

Maike Morrison @maikemorrison.bsky.social · 14/03/2025

6/ (Ex. 1) In microbiome samples collected along the GI tracts of individuals from 7 ruminant species, FAVA peaks in the small intestine–so lots of variability would have been missed by stool sampling! We also find taxonomic variability >> functional variability–evidence for functional redundancy.

Plot showing FAVA computed with genus or CAZYme abundances across ruminant host individuals. FAVA is much higher for genus than CAZyme abundances. For both data types, FAVA peaks in the small intestine and is quite low in the large intestine, suggesting much variation across individuals would be missed with stool sampling.

150

Maike Morrison @maikemorrison.bsky.social · 14/03/2025

5/ FAVA can account for phylogenetic similarity among taxa and can differentially weight samples, which is especially useful for time series data (Fig. 3). FAVA can be computed in sliding windows to see how variability changes over space or time (Fig. 4). We demonstrate FAVA in 2 examples.

Diagram showing that FAVA can incorporate a matrix giving the similarity between each pair of taxa, as well as a vector of weights for each sample, which can be particularly useful for time series data with uneven sampling times.

260

Maike Morrison @maikemorrison.bsky.social · 14/03/2025

3/ FAVA extends the pop-gen statistic FST (which traditionally measures variability of allele frequencies across multiple populations) to instead measure variability of taxonomic or functional abundances across multiple microbiome samples (Fig. 1). All it needs is an OTU table, or similar.

Schematic showing that FAVA measures variability across all rows of an OTU table at once, while other methods measure the diversity of one sample or the distance between a pair of samples.

162

Maike Morrison @maikemorrison.bsky.social · 14/03/2025

1/ Hey y'all, I'm excited to share my latest paper, which is out now in PNAS! We introduce FAVA, a statistical framework to measure compositional variability across microbiome samples. If you want to measure variability across a stacked bar plot, FAVA is for you! Paper: doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

5 relative abundance plots arranged to have increasing compositional variability (variability across relative abundance samples, here vertical bars)

520772

Maike Morrison @maikemorrison.bsky.social · 08/03/2025

It's been easy to feel powerless these past few months, but the @standupforscience.bsky.social rally in SF this afternoon was an important reminder that the fight is not over!

Maike holding a sign in front of SF city hall. Sign is a parody of the Gadsden flag. Text on bottom says, "don't tread on me." Snake usually on Gadsden flag is replaced with a caterpillar phylogenetic tree.

170

Maike Morrison @maikemorrison.bsky.social · 09/07/2024

I'm stoked to be at #SMBE2024! If you're interested in variability/diversity, microbiomes, and/or non-traditional applications of FST, I would love to chat! Poster Weds #44, title: Quantifying the stability of microbiomes and the timescale of antibiotic perturbation with FAVA

040

Maike Morrison @maikemorrison.bsky.social · 09/02/2024

Just bought some science stamps! Now we only need a theory edition... store.usps.com/store/produc...

A sheet of colorful stamps titled "life magnified." Stamps include a moth antenna, mold spores, barnacle legs, and diatoms arranged like a snowflake.

010